EW! A Blog.

My first question when I saw this scam alert was: Who the heck would have "extra asphalt" that they would just go romping around rural Lane County trying to smear on your driveway?

WATCH OUT FOR PAVING SCAMS IN LANE COUNTY

News Release from Construction Contractors Board

Posted on FlashAlert: June 3rd, 2014 11:14 AM

Salem - Paving scammers may be at work in the rural Lane County. Property owners should be wary of people who show up on their doorstep with "extra asphalt" they offer up in a deal.

The state Construction Contractors Board (CCB) recently learned of a property owner in Marcola who was approached earlier this year with an offer to pave his driveway. An investigation is under way.

Call the CCB at 503-378-4621 if anyone contacts you for paving you didn't solicit. Legitimate contractors typically do not solicit work door-to-door.

Meanwhile, here are some ways to spot scammers:

* You don't call them - they show up at your doorstep.

* Their vehicles often show out-of-state license plates.

* They say they have leftover materials so they can give you a great price.

* They quote an initial low price, then demand more to finish the project.

* Generally, they are not licensed with the CCB.

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About the CCB

The CCB is the state agency licensing 33,000 contractors. Anyone who is paid to repair, improve or build a home must be licensed. Learn more about how to have a successful project at www.oregon.gov/ccb.

I would have taken more science in college if my profs had sung to me. Dr. Richard Alley brings together my love for folklore with the dangers of climate change in this glacier-oriented version of "The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night."

Federal Judge Michael McShane ruled at noon today at the U.S. federal courthouse here in Eugene that Oregon's ban on same-sex marriage was unconsitutional. That's not the only good news. By 12:20 Lane County had send a press release announcing the Lane County Clerk's office will begain issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples at 1 pm and "The Clerk’s Office will also officiate for same-sex couples wishing to marry, according to the press release below, which also asks people to remember that the clerk's office also has to handle tomorrow's elections.

Lane County to Begin Issuing Same-Sex Marriage Licenses

Contact: Public Information Officer Anne Marie Levis, 541-915-4659

Under direction from the Oregon Vital Records Department, the Lane County Clerk’s Office will begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples beginning at 1:00 p.m. The Clerk’s Office will also officiate for same-sex couples wishing to marry.

“Our staff strive to provide the highest level of customer service as we go through the expected influx of marriage licenses. In addition to issuing marriage licenses, our staff is also responsible for Tuesday’s election,” said Lane County Clerk Cheryl Betschart. “We appreciate the understanding of couples awaiting this important moment.”

Licenses are sold from 9 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. and from 1 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Weddings are performed most mornings, and slots are reserved on a first-come, first-served basis. Purchase of a license is required before time for a wedding ceremony may be reserved.

Cost:

License: $60

Waiver of three day waiting period: $10

Marriage Ceremony: $100

Certified copy of completed license (proof of the wedding, needed for name changes): $4

According to the Oregon Health Authority Center for Health Statistics, same-sex couples have the option of choosing between marriage and a domestic partnership, which has been available in Oregon since 2008. Couples who are in a domestic partnership may marry their current partner. Someone in a domestic partnership who wishes to marry another person must dissolve that partnership prior to any marriage. Same-sex couples who were married in another state do not need to take any action: their marriage is already recognized under Oregon law.

UO radio station KWVA and Portland television station KATU have aired interviews with an alleged witness to the events in the the UO rape investigation. The UO's SWAT (Sexual Wellness Awareness Team) questions the paper's coverage of the alleged witness's story writing that it just serves to discredit and get people to question the victim's story in a viewpoint in the Oregon Daily Emerald.

The Daily Emerald followed the KWVA airing of the witness interview with a report headlined "Self-proclaimed witness talks to KWVA about alleged forcible rape involving Dotson, Artis and Austin."

The Emerald writes:

UO student Kelsy Alston explained during the interview what she witnessed in connection with the March 8 incident.

“Throughout the party, she was migrating, leaning towards these men,” Alston said during the Quack Smack segment on KWVA. “I had spoken to her friends about that interaction. They gave their opinions on how she interacts with men typically and it mirrored what she was doing at this time.”

Alston — who made it clear that she did not know the alleged survivor prior to the party — suggests the night were different than that described in the police report.

The UO's SWAT responded to this and other concerns about the Emerald's coverage with a viewpoint that reads, in part:

Additionally, we would like to express our anger over the publication of your and KWVA’s article interviewing the “self-proclaimed witness” at the party. Whether or not this person was at the party, this article seems to exist for no reason other than to discredit and cause people to question the survivor’s story. You quote this “witness” as saying, “I had spoken to her friends about that interaction. They gave their opinions on how she interacts with men typically and it mirrored what she was doing at the time.” The survivor’s behavior around men previous to the assault or even the next day does not “disrupt the evidence” given in the police report; it is completely irrelevant. In fact, using a person’s previous sexual attitudes or desires to determine the validity of their experience is the definition of slut-shaming.

The criticisms of the interview are also relevant to the KATU story. KATU's story might call for harsher criticism as it makes claims such as that that the interview "calls into question" the victim's story.

Duly noted: Writing about rape and rape allegations is not easy and the Emerald has sought to use its terminology very carefully, refering to the woman in the case as a "survivor." Also, Oregonian reporter Andrew Greif,who was the sports reporter is I believe who broke the story by noticing something was amiss with basketball practices, is an Emerald alum.

In this week's EW election coverage I write about who donated how much money to which campaign. One of the first rules of journalism (and keep in mind there are a lot of "number one rules of journalism") is follow the money.

The committe page tells you who filed the committee, who the treasurer is and contact information. It also gives you links to the data.

Clicking "account summary" gets you this year's totals of what was spent and what came in. Hitting previous at the bottom of that page gets you the numbers from previous years. As of today, Bozievich is reporting more than $109,000 in donations in 2014 and more than $115,000 in expenditures. There are a couple reasons a candidate may have spent more than he or she has brought in, and one is there is sometimes a (legal) lag time in when candidates report money after they get it.

Here we can see that Bozievich's most recent donations include $25o from Reed's Trucking and $14,500 from the Community Action Network. He's spent $15,000 with New Media Northwest — probably on television commericials.

Want to know who's behind the Community Action Network and has all that money? Type Community Action Network into the box where you typed Bozievich's name on your original search. That gets you the committe page telling you it was created by Dennis Morgan. Clicking the "campaign finance activity" link shows you who gave money (cash contribution) and where CAN spent money (expenditure). Looks like a lot of the money came from the timber industry: Giustina, Murphy Company and Delta Construction, to name a few. Now go have fun web-stalking campaign donations.

It's endorsement time — ballots for the primary election here in Oregon get mailed tomorrow — and newspapers are putting out their endorsements, as well as printing page after page of stories, interviews and viewpoints on who's running and what we think of them. Sometimes the backstory is more fun than the endorsements.

Like when a karaoke-singing climate change denying Senate candidate calls out a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for writing "blah blah blah in his notebook." (And yes, good reporters still take notes).

EW's recs on who you should cast your ballot for will come out in next week's paper, but Portland's Willamette Week published its endorsements yesterday. Today, media blogger Jim Romenesko calls attention to what some might call a gaffe by Pulitzer Prize-winner Nigel Jaquiss during a lengthy endorsement interview.

I don't call it a gaffe, I call it what we all want to write when a politician drones on and on and on.

"I see what you’re writing down there. You just wrote down 'blah blah blah blah' for everything that Jo Rae said. Jo Rae is a respectful woman. Why are you not respecting her by writing 'blah blah blah blah' in your notepad?"

Callahan, still grumbling about Jaquiss' notes settles down enough to move on to the next question, which was about climate change. “It’s a myth,” he says.

Jaquiss, who was already winning with the blah blah thing, then mildly asks, "Where are you on the Easter Bunny?"

Callahan, who had previously been called out for his behavior earlier in the interview, then begins to angrily object to the question and to what he calls a lack of respect. The moderator then tells him he has had two strikes and will be asked to leave. "Who do you think you are?" he asks Willamette Week.

"This is neither a fair nor balanced meeting," he's told, as it's pointed out to him this is an endorsement interview. Callahan calls WW disrepectful thin-skinned liberals before announcing he has better things to do with his time and leaving.

Willamette Week did not endorse Callahan in the Republican primary, instead the Portland alt weekly endorsed Oregon Right-to-Life candidate Jason Conger, which as they say, is a whole 'nother issue. Conger tells Willy Week that he doesn't really have a firm conviction either way on the "climate change debate." He calls both sides "incredible."

EW hasn't covered Callahan's many campaigns very much (and I'm pretty sure we won't be endorsing any climate change deniers) but we did cover his karaoke singing in some detail back in 2010 in a story by Rick Levin when Callahan was running for Lane County Commissioner.

At the more uplifting end of the karaoke spectrum is the story of Eugene native Mark Callahan, who sang Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” the same night I butchered Tom Petty. Callahan, a graduate of Sheldon High School and OSU, is in his early 30s, married, with two young daughters. What makes him remarkable, and perhaps unique, as a karaoke singer is that he flies completely solo — meaning that, instead of making karaoke a social outing, Callahan chooses to go to the bar alone, stay sober as a jaybird and sing as many songs as he can get in.

Callahan says he was introverted as a kid, and though he outgrew his shyness in college, he doesn’t consider himself an exhibitionist. In fact, his Saturday night outings provide him with a means of overcoming, via karaoke, any lingering social anxieties. “This has actually really helped me to build up my confidence. I actually used to have a kind of nervousness talking in front of people,” he says.

“I think I just want to be more open,” says Callahan, noting that he usually feels pretty good upon finishing a song. “It’s almost like coming down off some kind of high. It’s almost like pure joy.”

And here’s the corker: Callahan recently tossed his hat in the ring for Lane County Commissioner, vying in the District 2 slot being vacated in November by Bill Dwyer. Callahan considers entering politics to be a natural evolution of his upbringing in the Boy Scouts, an organization that acted “like a surrogate father” after his parents divorced. The Scouts, he says, proved that making a difference in people’s lives is both desirable and possible.

Is it too much of a stretch to conclude that, for Callahan, the challenge of singing karaoke gave rise to a desire for political office? Why not? Just as Kennedy’s cathode-charismatic crushing of a perplexed, pasty-faced Nixon during the 1960 presidential debate ushered in the era of televised politics, could Callahan be a harbinger — our first karaoke commissioner?

“The main reason I do [karaoke] is to be up in front of people,” Callahan says. “If I can combine that confidence with my desire to help people, I think that’s going to work out good for me.”

Reading legal documents is a key part of covering certain news stories. Sometimes it's fascinating. Sometimes I wish lawyers would stop capitalizing every other word (I know, it's a legal thing, but seriously people it's city, not City).

Reading legal transcripts is more of the same. Sometimes fascinating, sometimes a morass of legal confusion. But The New York Time's new Verbatim series that is "dramatizing" legal transcripts takes things to a whole new level. This deposition is frustratingly brilliant.

Without giving to much away, here's the NYT's description of the case:

The Case: Ohio Supreme Court Case 2010-2029

In 2010, the Cuyahoga County Recorder’s Office in Ohio changed their policy about copying records. Digital files would no longer be available, and the public would have to make hard copies of documents for $2 per page. This would prove to be prohibitively expensive for Data Trace Information Services and Property Insight, companies that collect hundreds of pages of this public information each week. They sued the Recorder’s Office for access to digital versions of the documents on a CD. In the middle of the case, a lawyer representing them questioned the IT administrator of the Recorder’s Office, which led to a 10-page argument over the semantics of photocopiers.

The world of social media has noticed that not only does Lane County inspect local restaurants, it posts them online in a searchable database. For those of you who haven't had the scores posted and reposted on Facebook, Twitter and the like, you can find them here.

To make it easier, the restaurants that received failing scores — below 70 — and need to be inspected again in 30 days are highlighted in red. You can search by city, score and/or restaurant name.

As of today, of Eugene's 563 restaurants listed only five earned the red highlights.

Springfield showed 196 restaurants and none with a score of 69 or less — that includes strip clubs that serve food, like Sweet Illusions, for those of you who wonder about such things.

Is Portland powered by Canadian corpses? The Associated Press is reporting that "The Marion County Board of Commissioners in Salem has ordered an incinerator to stop accepting boxed medical waste to generate electricity after learning the waste it’s been burning may include tissue from aborted fetuses from British Columbia."

It sounds like the issue for the commission is that there might be some tissue from fetuses in the sealed boxes that are being sent to Salem from British Columbia.

Right, squeamish commissioners, never mind the other leftover body parts that have apparently been generating power in Oregon: "Kristy Anderson, a British Columbia Health Ministry spokeswoman, told The Associated Press that regional health authorities there have a contract with a company that sends biomedical waste, such as fetal tissue, cancerous tissue and amputated limbs, to Oregon, where it’s incinerated in the waste-energy plant."

The AP story continues:

"The facility is owned and operated by Covanta in a partnership with Marion County. According to its website, it processes 550 tons per day of municipal solid waste, generating up to 13 megawatts of energy sold to Portland General Electric.

Marion County estimates that the facility processes about 700 tons of in-county medical waste each year and about 1,200 tons from elsewhere, making it a small percentage of the total waste burned. Out-of-town medical waste is charged a higher fee."

I feel like this could be taken to a whole new level. Why get cremated or have a green burial when you could send your body to Marion County and become electricity instead? I see a whole new renewable energy industry in Oregon out of this, if we can just make sure all those burning bodies and body parts don't affect our clean air. I can see the slogans now: "When your lights go out, ours go on!"

As the Schoolhouse Rock song goes, "Where do you think it all comes from? Electricity, electricity."

UO law prof Rob Illig got a little hot under the collar the other day and his series of emails went viral. As The Oregonian puts it, it's not "cute-puppy viral" either. UO econ prof Bill Harbaugh called attention to rants (and lists the sites that have picked up the story) the on his UO Matters blog.

According to the Oregon Law Blawg, in its response to the brouhaha, the issue was a proposal that a group of law faculty came up with — " to divert the law school’s portion of the faculty merit pay funds to a post-graduate fellowship program for new law grads, in lieu of accepting a pay increase."

In other words, because it is hard for law students to get a job after they graduate, the faculty wanted to help them out. According the website Above the Law, which calls itself "a behind the scenes look at the world of law," only 57 percent of 2013 law school graduates are "employed in full-time, long-term jobs that require bar passage."

Illig's posts about the proposal made at a meeting that he did not attend contain gems like "Is this some kind of faculty version of white-man's guilt?"

He writes, "As I learn more of the details of Friday’s proposal, I am even more perplexed by its logic and frightened by its poison," and continues:

"Voting on this important a decision without notice and without serious consideration was a gross breach not only of procedure but of TRUST.

What did the agenda say? “Discussion of Graduate Fellowships.” Pardon my French, but this is absolute bullshit. Colleagues do not ambush one another like this.

How can I trust the administration or any of my faculty colleagues? No wonder we’ve become a third-tier law school. Who’s going to want to come here to study or teach in this kind of poisonous atmosphere?"

"While we agree that it may be unfair for the school to cancel professors’ raises, this is the kind of educational crisis that requires everyone involved to give a little bit more, lest they find themselves on the receiving end of a faculty buyout offer or, worse yet, a layoff. It’s not like this hasn’t happened at many law schools already. Unfortunately, like the honey badger, Professor Illig doesn’t seem to give a s**t."

In the end, the faculty plan, Illig's viral rant notwithstanding, got shot down, according to the post by Jen Reynolds on the Oregon Law Blawg:

"Last Friday, this group brought this idea as a resolution (included below) to the regularly scheduled faculty meeting. A wide majority of those present voted to approve the resolution—in addition, a majority of the full faculty support the resolution.

We brought the matter to the Provost and although he is supportive of our goals he cannot bend the University rules to make this creative idea happen. However, we remain committed to finding ways to fund post-graduate opportunities and address other employment issues facing our graduates."

Eugene Weekly is looking for news and arts interns with a time commitment designed to fit into a school schedule and the opportunity to publish every week in a newspaper with 40,000 print circulation and an audited circulation of more than 80,000 readers.

Eugene Weekly interns have gone on to jobs at The Oregonian (reporter), Portland Mercury (staff writer/freelance), The Daily Astorian (reporter), Sacramento News and Review (managing editor, special publications) and more and of course at EW itself, as well as internships at other news sources such as CNN, Willamette Week, and The Register-Guard, to name a few. Ideally when interns finish up at EW, they also begin doing paid freelance work for us if they so desire.

Unlike other internships, our interns don't run errands or stay in the background, an internship with Eugene Weekly means writing weeklys news briefs or music reviews as well as the chance to write in-depth features and to pitch (and write) a cover feature. Recent interns have done stories on and interviewed everyone from Arun Gandhi to nationally touring pop stars.

EW's internship is designed to give interns an education on writing on deadline, writing for an alt weekly and working for a newspaper. Interns get feedback on their pieces, and editing and proofreading experience of their own. The focus of our intern program is on getting students the clips and experience they need to get jobs in the competitive and ever-changing journalism world. We work with our interns' school schedule and schedule intern hours accordingly. The internship is unpaid, though we do try to give perks in addition to the focus on learning such as tickets to shows.

Internship applications are accepted quarterly and we prefer interns who have taken Reporting 1 or have the equivalent training in basic interviewing skills, writing and the ethics of journalism.

Deadlines for applications are:

Nov. 10 For internships starting winter term.

February 10 for internships starting spring term

April 10 for summer term

Sept. 10 for fall term.

Internships run the equivalent of two 10-week terms spring-summer, summer-fall, fall-winter etc). Interns are asked to come in to the office twice a week for 2 hours during the work day and are expected to committ about eight more hours a week maxium doing interviews, writing etc. out of the office.

We are looking for interns in the areas of hard news, environment reporting, politics, sports, arts, music, books and more. The ideal intern is dedicated, loves journalism, fun and willing to throw him/herself into a story.

To apply please send a cover letter, resume and three clips (articles written for class are fine) to camilla@eugeneweekly.com.

Last week, Kathy Jones of Seneca-Jones timber told The Oregonian that the timber company wants to log the Elliott State Forest for " personal reasons" and says of CFD members "“They’re elitist environmentalists, they’re sent from Washington D.C., they’re not about doing anything reasonable.”

This leaves EW wondering if Jones has ever actually seen a CFD member in person? Jones was responding to a letter from CFD vowing to put lawsuits on desks and protesters in trees if timber companies bid on parcels of the public Elliott forest that the state is looking to sell into private hands.

The Oregonian writes:

Seneca Jones Timber Co. on Wednesday announced it bid on land for sale in the Elliott State Forest to deliberately challenge environmental groups that warned they would sue to block the state from divesting forestland potentially housing the threatened marbled murrelet seabird.

Kathy Jones, Seneca Jones’ co-owner, said her company didn’t bid on the land because her mill needs lumber but because she and her two sisters refused to be bullied by “eco-radical” environmental groups and believed no other timber companies made an offer.

“It was just like: No, we’re not going to lay down for this,” Jones said. “We’re taking a stand. It’s very much a personal decision. We just decided we were going to do this based on principle and bring it to the public’s attention.”

Like the spotted owl before it, the murrelet has become a cornerstone species for environmental groups seeking to curtail logging in Oregon. The bird’s population in Washington, Oregon and California has steadily declined over the last decade.

This week, the Cascadia Forest Defenders offer an abject apology (OK, not really).

Cascadia Forest Defenders, an organization composed of dozens of community volunteers, would like to express our apologies for causing the owners of Seneca Jones timber company, who are some of the richest and most powerful people in Lane County, to feel so bullied. In this day and age, when many of us are separated from the 1% by dramatic differences in the way we experience daily life, it can be hard for us to remember just how threatened the rich and elite can feel when challenged by those so far below them. We recognize now that a company like Seneca Jones, a company that admittedly can afford to spend millions of dollars out of spite by bidding on a land sale in the Elliott Forest because they "refuse to be bullied " must find it terrifying to have a group of community organizers suggest that people and planet should come before profit and property lines.

However, there are some things that we are confused about. If Seneca Jones wants to clearcut ecosystems for "our children's well-being", why is the company's biomass plant, which pumps an estimated 14 tons of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and other chemical goodies, located within three miles of three separate schools? Folks within that Eugene zip code have almost twice the rate of asthma as the rest of town - that same zip code also has the highest percentage of people living below the poverty line. If Seneca Jones is submitting a bid on the Elliott "for all Oregonians", why does it seem like the wealthiest are profiting at the expense of the poorests' physical health?

Additionally, the United States Forest Service states that only 5% of Oregon original coastal forests remain intact. Obviously, it was naive of us to think that killing most of an ecosystem could ever be enough, that the millions and millions of dollars in profit could ever be enough. Jones family, we are sorry that we may have to prevent your family from owning yet another million dollar racehorse, which is obviously more important then clean drinking water, critical fish habitat, and resilient, healthy forests.

We really owe you one, Seneca. Something about your recent media comments has activists flocking in, hoping to meet you in the woods. Perhaps it was publicly admitting you intend to clear-cut old growth in East Hakki, which according to the Oregon Department of Forestry has "trees more than 300 years old" which "contain platforms that are suitable for marbled murrelet nests." Perhaps, it's our own excitement, generated by the group of people that saved most of the Trapper Timber sale (remember, that old growth you tried to log in the Willamette National Forest?). Perhaps it is all the neighborhood residents who can no longer breathe in their backyards due to your dirty power plant spewing toxic fumes all over the neighborhood.

We don’t know what it is Seneca Jones, but people sure are hoping you win that bid.

Markstrom Nugent, who was fired for checking her email while on pregnancy disability, was not allowed by R-G management to come in and clean out her desk, so employees past and present as well as members of the community were invited to celebrate her and her baby. Keefer sent out this message through a public post on his Facebook page on March 27:

Arts world people: As some of you may know, my former colleague and now very pregnant Serena Markstrom Nugent, the pop music writer for many years, has just been fired from the Register-Guard -- while on medical disability leave! -- after committing the sin of checking her work email from home. Friends are going to assemble in front of the newspaper at 3:30 p.m. today to wish her well as she arrives to clean out her desk. Y'all come!

Today Keefer posted:

Arts world friends,

I've been fired by the Register-Guard. Since I retired from full-time work in July, I've been contributing a couple art reviews to the Arts section each month as a freelancer. But according to a one-line email I just received, “We won't be needing your freelance services anymore.”

There was no explanation, but this follows closely on my public support of former colleague Serena Markstrom Nugent, who was fired by the paper last month, while on medical leave, after working there 13 years. See today's Eugene Weekly for details on that story.

Let's just say I'm not devastated. Of course I'll miss the opportunity to review more art shows around town, but it's time to concentrate on my photography and writing projects, as well as working with Wordcrafters writing conference and Lane Arts Council.

See you on the Art Walk!

Bob

The R-G seems determined to cut off its nose to spite its face — Keefer and Markstrom Nugent have been strong and vibrant supporters of the arts and music community. Nobody wants to see a locally owned daily news source go under. Anyone have any advice for the R-G?

The Oregonian, that venerable Portland paper, has been heavy on the reader surveys lately, and stories about fat cats (the feline, not political kind) and cute videos. It's all about the reader clicks when a newspaper goes digital-first. Willamette Week has a story out about how the clamor for clicks by The O's owner, Advance Publications is affecting the newsroom; WW writes "Internal documents show the newsroom’s staff faces steep new quotas for feeding the website. The documents, reported by wweek.com March 23, say 75 percent of reporters’ job performance will be measured by Web-based benchmarks, including how often they post to Oregonlive.com. The most productive reporters at meeting their goals will have a chance at earning merit pay."

I appreciate The O's continued work on covering oil trains and coal, but like others, I wonder if focusing on how often a reporter posts could affect his or her ability to do in-depth reporting?

Posting things fast and furious isn't great for copy editing either. We all have a typo sneak into the paper here and there — what journalist hasn't reported on a pubic meeting when she meant public? But the irony of a basic typo (it's versus its) on a survey about readers think about the content on OregonLive is duly noted in the context of concerns that the O is valuing speed and clicks over content.